A City Built for Sunshine

In a moment of climate fatalism, ecomodernists are imagining a green urbanism that doesn’t come at the cost of abundance or beauty.

High Rise, Hard Times

Building Civilization at Shenzhen Speed

Once the poorer neighbor of Hong Kong, Shenzhen has been transformed into a showcase for the speed, power, and dynamism of Chinese development — and a study in extreme inequality.

Our Very Own Albert Speer

The architect Philip Johnson had some good qualities. He was also talentless, a fascist, and a liar.

Rebuilding the Social City

To solve the housing crisis, we may have to go back to the future.

All Dad’s Armies

British politics have become a strange form of World War II cosplay, where the European Union are the Nazis, 1945 is a betrayal, and Boris Johnson is the newWinston Churchill.

I Want My BBC

British television has increasingly become an arm of the Conservative Party — yet many on the Left nostalgically remember an earlier, more open media landscape. Was the BBC ever ours?

It Came From Canada!

David Cronenberg’s first three films track the progress of epidemics “from the perspective of the disease.” What they reveal is a North American society already on the brink of disaster.

The Art of Being Wrong

Wyndham Lewis was perhaps the most talented English painter and novelist of the first half of the twentieth century. How did he become best known as a fascist?

The Tenured Radical on the Telly

The 1980s BBC series The History Man was a venomous takedown of academic pseudo-radicals. How does it stand up today?

Planned Paranoia

There’s a reason why urban housing developments and suburban subdivisions can seem threatening and unwelcoming to outsiders: they’re planned that way, in order to “design out crime.”

We Can’t Lose the Collective Experience of Going to the Movies to This Pandemic

Going to the movies feels fundamentally different from simply streaming videos: it's a collective experience, and often inspires discussion and argument. In 2021, when the pandemic finally recedes, we should build socialist film clubs.

The Left Must Stand With the Ukrainian People and Against Putin’s War

Socialists’ first task in Vladimir Putin’s appalling war on Ukraine: provide unconditional solidarity with its victims.

When Paris Was Red

In the twentieth century, socialists and communists used municipal power in Paris to build some of Europe's most ambitious social housing projects — housing that was not only beautiful but made for and by the city's working class.

Willi Münzenberg Was the Marxist Rupert Murdoch

In the 1920s and ’30s, German publisher Willi Münzenberg built a network of magazines, newspapers, and film studios that terrified big business interests. It became the largest left-wing media operation in history.

Workers Deserve Beautiful, Renovated, Even Luxurious Public Housing

This year's Pritzker Prize, the highest award in architecture, went to French architects who rejected the demolition of public housing. Instead, the architects insisted on renovating and expanding public units to make working-class residents' homes more modern, humane, and attractive.

More Fun for More People

The architect, planner, and landowner Clough Williams-Ellis dedicated his estate to an experiment in “propaganda for architecture.” How did it become best known as the cutest of all the fictional dystopias?

A Soundtrack for Progress

For veteran music critic Simon Reynolds, the “avant-lumpen” sound captures how it feels to be alive today with raw voices and synthetic soundscapes.

International Solidarity Rebuilt Postwar Vietnam

During the Vietnam War, the city of Vinh was almost destroyed by US bombing. Socialists around the world helped rebuild it. Today, Vinh's architecture stands as a monument to that internationalist solidarity.

The Foreman

Mark E. Smith of the Fall was one of the late 20th century’s great working-class musicians, but his music suffered from his overwhelming resentment of his middle-class audience.